Free Flow

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egal

ramework

the

ational

nternational

evel

mendations on how the freshwater objectives and limits

should be met. These included approaches to improve

management practices for land and water use and to deal

with over-allocation, the clarification and extension of

the consenting system, and the facilitation of voluntary

transfer and trading of consents.

Following the forum’s first report and its conversations

around the country, the Government put in place a limit-

setting regime for fresh water through its 2011 National

Policy Statement on Freshwater Management, which

required regional authorities to set limits for water quality

and quantity. It also put in place a National Clean-up

Fund and an Irrigation Acceleration Fund. These actions

opened the way for the forum’s second mandate and its

more detailed second

and third

reports.

In March 2013 the Government issued the

Freshwater reform – 2013 and beyond

consultation

document calling for:

• a catchment-based collaborative planning process

• a National Objectives Framework requiring all

waters to meet minimum states for ecosystem and

human health and to provide for consistency of

approaches among regional authorities

• government direction, guidance and support

for regional authorities to ensure infrastructure,

processes, techniques and tools are in place to

manage water within the limits regime.

and a ‘Small Group’ of 21 major stakeholders assisted by regional and

central government as ‘active observers’. This subgroup carried out

the principal task of formulating consensus. It included pastoral agri-

culture and horticulture, forestry, hydropower, water infrastructure

interests, recreationalists, tourism and environmental groups, as well

as M

ori tribes representing the Crown’s Treaty of Waitangi partners.

The forum received extensive help from the knowledge community

in New Zealand including scientists, social scientists, economists and

policy specialists, mostly without payment.

The Government gave LWF two successive mandates and substan-

tially funded its operations. Over a four year period, LWF reached

consensus on a fully-developed blueprint for land and water manage-

ment in New Zealand. The forum prepared three reports, and after the

first one forummembers travelled to all 16 regions of New Zealand to

discuss the suggested recipe for reform with the wider public.

In its three reports and their 158 recommendations (and a statement

on M

ori rights and interests) the LWF recognized that water must

be managed in the context of the whole hydrological cycle and that

the way we manage land and soil affects the quantity and availability

of fresh water. In essence, it recommended bottom-line objectives,

set at the national level, to ensure that all water bodies are of good

ecological health, that their prestige, or 'mana'

–

as M

ori patici-

pants put it

–

is maintained and are not harmful to human health.

It proposed that within this framework, quantitative and qualitative

objectives for water bodies should be set by communities at catchment

or subcatchment levels, and it described the collaborative processes

by which these tasks should be carried out. It made detailed recom-

Double Hill Stream in the Canterbury high country has high water quality, reflecting the undeveloped nature of the catchment

Image: NIWA